SaintZvlkx

You've obviously done something right, then.

Not OP obviously, but I'm growing hemp on the family farm this year & we're working with other farmers in the area, some of whom have partnered and some of whom have struck similar deals. Going to throw some things out in no particular order.

Crops require expertise to succeed- you can get lucky or be just competent enough to work it out a few times, but relatively minor mistakes or oversights can compound or exponentially increase risk. Your other post indicates you're a farmer so I'm sure you understand, but from my limited experience with hemp the variability (legal and weather-based) is a lot higher than most of the crops I've grown If your family doesn't have experience with hemp or cannabis you want to shoot for a realistic acreage to plant (or go for a test year) you need the equipment to till and maintain the soil, probably a transplanter to put the plants in the ground (~1k per acre how the hell did I get my first number), which you may or may not have depending on what you're growing right now. You need to know what nutrients hemp likes and dislikes, how those match up to your soil- stuff I'm sure you're aware of if it's being farmed. Hemp is also extremely sensitive to water- it likes a fair amount but overload it and it can get stressed and go hot (over the THC percentage), so you need very good drainage and preferably no wet spots. This also means that if you're in a dry climate overhead irrigation has a limited time window in which it is safe and effective to use. If your crop goes hot or is too stressed by weather you could have a drastically reduced yield to no yield at all. You also need the infrastructure and labor pool to deal with exigent circumstances- if your crop is almost ready to harvest but it's going to rain for a week straight, it needs to be harvested before the rain starts or you will lose 100% of the crop to mold. This means you need the labor and machinery for harvest, and a space to store it if need be- and it's going to take up a LOT of space, and while still on the plant it can't be packed in tight due to fire risk, nor can it be a damp space as mold will set in. All of this means, as I said, you need a good labor pool, especially as without very expensive equipment hemp is a labor-intensive crop to harvest. Also keep in mind that if you're growing for oil you can't be within a few miles someone growing for any product that uses male plants.

As for the partnership itself, I won't say they're all bad but I have concerns about the partnerships I've seen thus far. Anyone approaching people who aren't farmers needs to have a significant logistics and supply chain to support them, as well as a great deal of knowledge and resources to ensure they succeed- and almost no one I've seen thus far is offering that- it's a new industry and in many ways an unprecedented crop. This is a gold rush, everyone wants to get in and I suspect at least 50% of the hemp that is getting planted in our state is going to fail this year. And unlike the gold rush, we're not talking about a resource with a fairly static value- no one knows what the price of hemp (biomass or processed products) is going to be in the near future, and it's likely going to drop in price significantly due to the exponential growth of the industry. The income per acre is also wildly different based on product- if you can get a guaranteed sale at 20k per acre you're looking at selling the biomass to a processor- and it's entirely possible for half your crop or less a processor can turn it that same acreage into a product that will triple or quadruple that income per acre- or the floor could fall from under either market due to legality, new scientific research, a glut of product, etc. There is no guarantee here, either through a partnership or selling it on your own.

Second, the simple fact is I haven't seen a partnership with terms I would take on. Earlier my family was offered a partnership at 60/40 of the sale price of the end product (or the same of the end product itself) in exchange for the seedlings, growing expertise, finding a buyer for the end product & transporting it to them, and PR work. Not a bad deal and the people who made the offer had succeeded in the past, but that's a partnership for work that we could do in-house- and as it turned out once we saw their starts and expertise, they had experience in business and really good genetics, but didn't have practical farm experience and made a lot of avoidable mistakes. Add to that the fact that they're going from a few dozen acres last year to hundreds this year and I have significant doubts about the ability of anyone who doesn't have a HUGE established logistics system to manage the transportation and safe storage of a bulky crop that will come in all at the same time. You also don't know the genetics you're planting- you can find out, but you have a lot less control, and you don't know how well the plants germinated. You're relying on a lot of human external factors on top of the external factors of the weather and market- so it comes down to whether or not you can trust the people you're working with, and whether you think the services they're offering are worth their cut to not learn how to do yourself.

I think it would work better as a black card: [TRIGGER WARNING]: Contains _______

If you're looking to start at 15 and put down 10k as an invesment you're looking far more solid than a lot of the farms around us. And growing hemp in UT certainly does have a nice warm fuzzy feeling to it.

I'll throw another couple things out given what you said- would recommend going for your own permit (this is state dependent, I know nothing about UT in this regard) and try growing a half acre to an acre to sell yourself, see what the market is like, maybe even get it processed and sell it as bulk oil. That kind of experience would really open up possibilities in the future, especially when dealing with a potential partner- provided you could do so under any contract you might sign. The industry is brand new and expanding rapidly (and full of people who are very passionate for various reasons), so there's not a lot of trust or established reputable names yet- and I think there will be a boom and bust the first few years, but I think any person or business who goes in with proper expectations and comes out with experience in the industry will have work in the future.

Last thing- guaranteed genetics and seedlings was one of the biggest draws when we were offered a partnership, seed was in exceedingly short supply this year & every major company ran dry quickly, so a lot of smaller businesses were turning to newly established companies- we ended up buying seed from 5 or 6 different suppliers, and this was for around 5 acres. As there isn't all that much data (well there is but it's all about marijuana and not everything carries over, particularly in terms of scale or stress) there's a lot of rolling with the punches & personal observation that has to be done. Due to the shortage & the inability to buy from the established seed companies we got seed from a small grower with established genetics and the paperwork to prove it- that had a godawful germination rate (it ended up germinating well in paper towels, I suspect there is a lot of available information on hemp and cannabis growth but a lot less on seed handling for best germination results). Some seed we bought off a tiny co-op farm that only had genetics on the parents and was wildly inconsistent in size and shape came up at exactly the germination rate they gave and looks healthy as hell, but we don't have a guarantee that one or both will not go hot. It's all up in the air now but you've got a realistic idea of what you're doing, which is good. Put a couple plants in pots in the garden in case the Mormons stop by, it's a good conversation piece.

I did an analysis of articles written by Fox News and Al-Jazeera, on topics of unrest in Arabic areas, more specifically, the closure of the British embassy in Iran. What I noticed: Fox used more violent and confrontational descriptions and wording that resulted in a piece of reporting that, while reporting more or less the same events and facts as Al-Jazeera's piece. Their writing came off as far more hostile towards the rioters/protesters.

Al-Jazeera used more neutral wording, describing the events in a more clinical manner (there might be some bias there, I read the Fox article first). Their reporting of the same event was less violent, but went into greater detail about the motives (both of the rioters and the government) of those involved.